There's something about Orbital that is inextricably linked with the summer's festival season – in fact, they have just announced their return to Glastonbury this year. With the UK slowly starting to defrost, thoughts turn to sunny days and the open air, so the DJing duo's turn on 6 Mix (6 Music | Listen on iPlayer)last week was perfect radio fare. Paul and Phil Hartnoll plundered their music collection and presented a show stuffed with their favourite tunes. Paul billed the show as "a history of dance music that we actually bought" rather than a comprehensive guide. "If your looking for a definitive history of dance, you're not going to get it here," he confessed. In the second half of the show, Phil takes to the decks for an exclusive mix, including the debut of a brand new Orbital track.

If dance isn't your scene, how about some punk? Radio 4 invited us to consider Women of the New Wave. (Listen on iPlayer) Once you've finished struggling with the concept of punk on Radio 4, sit back and enjoy interviews with the female icons of the era as Pauline Black – lead singer of the Selector – talks to her peers about their experiences. The show is hung on the premise that punk girls were the first women in music who were free to be themselves, but some of the stories of loneliness and anxieties about projecting an alternative image seems to throw this into question. None the less, the mini-rockumentary provides an entertaining insight into the industry. Interviewees include Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, and the Slits' Viv Albertine.

Radio 4 was also considering women's power to rock the vote this week. In Analysis: Babies and Biscuits, Alison Wolf looked at the gender gap in the polling booth. Anyone with half an eye on the current election campaign will have noticed the obviously courting of the female vote. But can it really work? As Wolf says, women are not an homogenous group concerned with a single issue any more than men are. But they do vote differently. So what's the best way to secure their support? Raising women's issues? Not necessarily – their major concerns in selecting a candidate tend to be the same as men. Female candidates? Judging by the examples of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, that won't work either. Harnessing girl power, it seems, is a tricky business.

One person who had no trouble courting ladies however was Lord Byron. However, The Mark Steel Lecture this week (Radio 7 | Listen on iPlayer) provided a comic insight into the poet's life that goes beyond the well known tales of seduction and incest. Steel recounted Byron's background and travels, his cynicism for rulers, and his captivation by spirit of French revolution. He spent his life surrounded by the gentry but in his first speech to the Lords, he defended the Luddites. Byron, said Steel, was privileged but tormented – he hated the wealthy but loved wealth. Ultimately, our lecturer argues that the Byron stayed true to the passionate convictions of his youth and was disappointed, if not enraged, by those he thought had abandoned their principles. Maybe that's something of which prospective MPs should take note as they try to win our hearts.